


He's Gone

by ThatwasJustaDream



Series: It Never Rains in California [1]
Category: It Never Rains in Southern California - Albert Hammond- (song)
Genre: Blow Job under the Bleachers, Bottom Misha Collins, Disappearing Best Friend with Benefits, Fan Fic about a Fictional TV show, M/M, M/M Young Romance, Not RPF, Protective Jensen, With Familiar Faces, fanfic about fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 07:10:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9537308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: This series is about a very slashy TV show that never existed, on a mid-1990s TV network that never did, either. "It Never Rains in California" starred a dozen actors well-recognized today, just starting their careers at the time.  Each part will have a very short chapter with an excerpt from the show, followed by a chapter with a fill-in fic written by an avid fangirl based on the episode.  Show synopsis and actors are outlined in the chapter 1 notes.





	1. Cutch and Elliot

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of the 1_million_words "Create a TV Show" challenge. I love old story songs, and when the challenge came up this idea hopped almost full-formed right into my fic brain.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains lines of dialogue from S1 E1 of "It Never Rains in California" along with show synopsis and some of the character bios - still a work in progress.

**It Never Rains in California Pilot: -- He’s Gone --- 10/1/1994**

**Teaser**

****FADE IN:**  
** Iowa and L.A. Montage: Players on a football field; students on a high school stage; cars zooming on an LA freeway and airport scenes.

 ******Elliot Boranski: (Voiceover)**  
**** They say when you’re young, that’s when you should chase your dreams. But before you do, take the advice of someone who did: Ask yourself, who'll come pick me up if I fall and the dream becomes a nightmare? And then ask yourself if you can live with it - if you end up destroying their dreams, too?

 ******Act One**  
**** Interior, Mount Vernon, Iowa high school library.

We start in a room full of students at long, dark wood tables surrounded by bookshelves and card catalogues and microfiche machines. Many students have their heads down, working, and others are chatting. At the far, back table Elliot sits alone.

Cutch Andrews: S’pretty. What is it?

Cutch is standing behind his friend. He’s blonde, tall and built: not heavy, exactly, but clearly a fleet-footed football player in shape and stance. He is leaning over the darkly handsome Elliot in a possessive way.

Elliot: It’s a park…by a mountain. Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. We had to sketch something with vermillion in it. Easy to find at the art supply store…not. Cost me twelve bucks for the pencils.

Cutch pulls up a chair and watches his friend draw.

Cutch: Wish I had a talent like yours.

Elliot: You do. And yours will make you rich, so… don’t try to make me feel better, okay? Not in the mood for it.

Cutch: Hey…Grumpy… I’m trying. Okay? I see you sitting here pouting, and …do you have to be so damn hard to help?

Cutch kicks Elliot’s sneaker lightly under the table and Elliot jumps like he’s been shot. We get a glower from him, and a sense that there’s something we are missing, something that pushed them apart recently, before Elliot goes back to work on his drawing.

Cutch: It’s damn near warm out. Let’s go for a walk. Get some sun.

Elliot: Some sun…and detention.

Cutch: Screw that. Lunch is in twenty minutes and no one’s gonna notice.

Cutch leans down and in, grinning up into his friend’s face and Elliot can’t not smile back, shaking his head. He shuts his sketchbook and stows it in his backpack.

Elliot: Fine. Whatever.

Elliot pats his pocket as he stands: There’s no cigarette pack visible, and we get an idea from the wide eye-roll Cutch gives him that whatever is in there is contraband. Elliot leaves the library first, and Cutch follows.

****-*-** **

 

**-Show Synopsis-**

“It Never Rains In California" was a slashy, escapist melodrama that aired for one season in the late-‘90s on a now-defunct cable network called “No Holds Barred” or NHB for short. The guilty-pleasure dramas and comedies on NHB featured gobs of salaciousness, and much shredding of moral fiber - to a degree that would not be produced for US television again for another fifteen years after NHB folded. “It Never Rains” was one of several NHB shows to feature same-sex relationships and polyamory without apology or explanation, and had a ferociously devoted college fangirl and fanboy support base. It regularly challenged some of the top network shows for prime-time dominance, often scoring double digit ratings and shares that toped fifteen percent of the viewing audience. It would have carried on had NHB not folded due to massive financial mismanagement and a ‘party like it’s 1999’ attitude among upper management.

 **Locations:** Los Angeles, with backstory flashbacks in Iowa and various other locales worldwide.

 **Synopsis:** Elliot Boranski (Misha Collins) is a popular and promising young acting student who drops out of his last year of high school against his father’s wishes to chase his dreams in Hollywood. Months later, Elliot’s best friend and sophomore football-hero-in-the-making Cutch Andrews (Jensen Ackles) gets wind his buddy is barely a garbled, drunken call home from a pay phone short of missing. Cutch goes after him, determined to bring Elliot to his senses and get him back to Iowa. Instead, he’s drawn into a world of reckless people with little to lose and millions to win in the fame game – if they play everyone around them just right.

Half the fun of the show is watching the various car wrecks Elliot and his friends turn their lives into, and the other half is wondering how long they can hold the pieces together once they’ve picked them up.

 **Lead characters:**  
**Elliot Boranski –** Misha Collins ~ Moody artist and actor, whose ambitions mask deep self-doubts and destructive tendencies that could only do him so much damage in Iowa. Now that he’s living life in the fast lane, Elliot’s well on track to die young and leave a pretty body unless someone gets through to him.  
 

 

 

 **Cutch Andrews –** Jensen Ackles ~ The son of a local department store founder with a former model for a mom, Cutch Andrews knows he’ll never have to ask where he’s going in life. If college football doesn’t work out for him in about a year, the family business will be waiting. The good life was placed in his lap the day he was born. Problem is, he’s not sure he wants any of it. The only thing he does know he wants is the boy he met in eighth grade with blue eyes that look right into his soul.

  
 

 **Cyn** – Anna Torv ~ Cynthia ‘Cyn’ Ramos came to Hollywood and hit fast- a TV show that lasted three seasons, a small movie role and the lead in a play that won her critical acclaim. But now, for no reason she or her agent can see she is struggling to get the parts that could make her a true breakthrough star. Cyn feels like a detective searching for answers – every one of which leads back to the distinct possibility that Cyn’s ex-husband is actively torpedoing her career.  
 

 

 **Jazz –** Scott Caan ~ When you grew up worshiping the Angry Young Man genre of 60s actors, it’s hard to accept that your path may be frothy half-hour comedies. Jazz is torn between riding the success that came in a form he never wanted and giving it up to dig deeper and win the roles and the fame he needs almost as much as oxygen.

 

  
**Adam Andrews** – Elijah wood  ~ Cutch’s younger brother is seen in flashbacks to Cutch’s life before he left to find Elliot. Adam is on the Asperger’s scale, is very close to his brother, and the only reason Cutch has to feel torn between his mission to save Elliot and the need to go home sooner than later.  
  
 

 

  
**Actor TBD** \- Part being recast  
**Janie** – Janie Williams is a writer and actress whose ultimate goal is the Broadway stage. L.A. life is just a step in that direction, except that L.A. life has brought her Cyn. She’s determined to have both the career she wants and love but bi-coastal living, as it turns out, only means twice the difficulties and five times the temptations.  
   
**Actor TBD - Part being recast**  
**Ben** When acting didn’t work out, Ben bought a surf shop. It more than pays the rent, but only because of the active drug trade he does on top of selling boards and gear. Ben lives with and is in a relationship with both Jazz and Piper and the many people Piper brings home on a rotating basis.  
   
  
**Piper** – Claire Danes ~ Piper is the one character on the show who wants nothing to do with acting. She’s an acolyte of a Hollywood agent, hell-bent on turning her business degree and a ton of attitude into wheeler-dealer status.

 

 

 

 

 **Recurring characters**  
Mr. Avery – landlord to Elliot and later Elliot/Cutch – Mark Sheppard  
Billy - Piper’s heroin addict kid brother - Johnny Galecki -  
Julia Masters – Morgan Fairchild – Andrews family neighbor, who knows about Cutch and Elliot and is a complication in Cutch's life.  
Colin Flyte – actor TBD - Cutch's fellow hometown football player who shows up mid-season, gets a clue about Elliot and Cutch and takes it back home with him – getting Cutch’s funding from his folks cut off.

2\. **Fandom:** “It Never Rains” aired when dial-up message boards and basic, flat html web pages were the rage among early web adapters. Fandom pages for “It Never Rains” popped up online for several years after its demise, with fans writing short fan fiction offerings that resolved the unfinished plotlines, and took the characters on many AU journeys. In the early Y2K era, a graphic novel of “It Never Rains” was published and sold tens of thousands of copies in airports, at college campus bookstores and online.


	2. Cutch and Elliot

Later they would both remember it as ‘the day before everything went to hell,’ but right then? It was only ‘Thursday morning study hall’ like so many before it.

“That’s pretty,” the voice over his left ear said casually, as if the body attached to it wasn’t leaning in and pressing against him, half smashing Elliot forward onto the library table. “Where is it?”

Elliot didn’t have to look up to know who it was; could smell the scent of the bubble gum Cutch routinely stole from his little brother’s baseball card packs, could feel the familiar weight of him against his back and his head.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Elliot shrugged, shivering at the warmth of Cutch’s breath by his left ear as Cutch eyed the drawing Elliot was working on. “It’s…a park. By a mountain. In South Korea or…somewhere like that.”

Elliot gestured generally at the encyclopedia above his sketchpad with his free left hand, and kept on working at shading the leaves in the forefront. 

“What’s that color?” Cutch asked, snapping his gum.

The way it popped sent a thin trail of lightning running from Elliot’s ear, down his neck, over his shoulders and straight to his balls.

Goddamn, Cutch. Way to fucking complicate study hall, man. Elliot tried not to squirm in his seat and failed.

“Vermillion. We got assigned a color to work with and… that’s what I got. Not orange, not red…vermillion. Easy to find at the art supply store. Not.”

“Wish I had talent like yours,” Cutch stopped hovering over him and stepped left, pulling up one of the library chairs.

Elliot tried not to watch Cutch drop into it; elbow going to the table, leaning his head on his hand and ….crap… there came that shiver of energy, again, but all through him, this time. He couldn’t draw with Cutch watching him, those green eyes flitting from Elliot’s face to his hands like him sketching was the most fascinating thing going on in the room.

Elliot was pretty sure it wasn’t - even though this was the most boring school library in the state, maybe.

“You do have a talent,” Elliot said, stopping to fish around his box of pencils for the green and the black – partly to start on the other portions of the sketch and also to push away the tingles. “You run like the actual wind, and you can catch a ball wrapped in pigskin. You’ll probably be a millionaire someday because of your talent and… I’ll have a shitty apartment over a garage with a space heater and a stray dog that followed me home. So shut the fuck up.”

Cutch huffed a sound of annoyance at his words and sat back in the chair, picking at his own fingernails.

“It’s seventy three degrees out,” Cutch announced.

“So?”

“Saw it on the thermometer outside the gym on the way back from practice. Seventy-three damn degrees. First time since, when? October?”

“Probably.”

“We should go outside. Get some sun.”

“Just like that?”

“We’re not in frigging detention. We’ve got lunch in fifteen minutes. No one’s going to give a damn or probably even notice.”

Elliot nodded; stuffed his pencils in their box and shoved them in his backpack along with the notebook. 

He patted his left pants pocket on his way to standing, making sure the joint he’d rolled this morning was still there tightly nestled in its baggie. Cutch rolled his eyes at the gesture – but he got up and followed Elliot. 

“I don’t know why you’re always doing that, man.”

“Doing what?

“Pissing on yourself; on your drawings, your painting. Figuratively. Of course.”

“Of course,” Elliot shook his head at Cutch feeling the need to explain, watching Cutch brush his bangs out of his eyes.

“You have no idea how lucky you are; your parents are begging you to let them pay for art college, and mine… they’re praying I get a full boat sports scholarship like there’s no tomorrow, man. You should see them: Literally down on their knees and praying to God, I shit you not.”

“Drawing and painting are only hobbies,” Elliot said for what felt like the thousandth time. “It’s all I want them to be. I can’t do it for a living, or I won’t love it anymore. Don’t ask me how I know, okay? I just do.”

He didn’t have to say what he did want to be. Everyone in the long, ‘W’ shaped, single-story brick building they were slowly walking away from knew the answer to that.

“You think you’ve got it in you?” Cutch asked. “To work that hard?”

Elliot didn’t get pissed at the words – he heard something caring in them, back there, behind their outer sternness. And he knew it was something Cutch asked himself about a football career every single day, too.

“Yeah, I have it in me,” Elliot said, but it was as much to himself as it was a reply.

They were wandering toward the football field, and the stands at the far end of it. For some reason, no one ever went back here at lunch time: The teachers stuck to their staff room or ran errands, and the kids who didn’t hit the cafeteria all headed for the parking lot where their cars or their bikes awaited. 

It was just them and the crickets and birds, now. Elliot listened to the sounds of them, and the wind in the old, tan grass and scrub brush from last fall; breathed in the first notes of April mud in the air, the ground increasingly mushy under their feet as they rounded the stands and ducked under them.

“What if I told you my dreams aren’t all in my head?” Elliot pulled out his lighter and fished the joint from its baggie. “What If I said…someone who knows better… told me I’m good? That I can really act?”

“I’d say ‘no shit, Sherlock,’” Cutch watched him light it, his own hands reaching up to grab a support bar from the stands overhead, under the seats, palms wrapping around it. “That’s not your primary problem, son. Your primary problem….as you well know… is we live in East Bumfuck Iowa, many a long mile from Hollywood. Might as well be on Mars, so…unless you’re building a rocket in your dad’s garage…”

“Shut up,” Elliot said, pulling a first hit from the joint, watching the muscles in Cutch’s arms dance as he gripped the bar like he wanted to swing from it, monkey-style. “You tell me that like I don’t know the odds.”

“Hey, it’s tough love. Gotta keep your actor’s ego in check. Protect you from yourself and your dreams of grandeur.”

“You’re an ass,” Elliot took another hit. “You’re an actual fucking twelve year old, sometimes.”

Cutch’s grin only spread. 

“Give me that,” he spit out his gum and held a hand out toward Elliot with his fingers together. “I want some, today.”

“You don’t have to,” Elliot said, handing him the pot. “Just because I smoke it doesn’t mean you have to smoke it.”

“I don’t, much. But I want some. We won’t get asked to pee in a cup again for months, maybe, so…not like I’m going to get busted.” 

Elliot watched him take a long draw from it, something lighting up Cutch’s eyes as he held in the smoke. 

“Come here,” Cutch said.

“What?”

“I said, come here,” he was trying to talk and not exhale and he sounded vaguely ridiculous. “You going deaf, Grumpy?”

Elliot couldn’t stop the eye roll those words and Cutch’s accidental imitation of a munchkin demanded: Cutch hadn’t used that nickname for him, his middle school nickname, in about three years, maybe. 

Elliot closed the few steps between them.

Cutch was two inches taller than him, now, tops; Elliot couldn’t say why it mattered but he liked it that his recent and likely final growth spurt had made them eye-to-eye, almost. He closed his, as Cutch leaned in and pressed his lips to Elliot’s. The sensation of it – being mouth to mouth again after so damn long made his pop open to accept the smoke Cutch was sending him. 

He took it in, inhaling lightly, arms going around Cutch and listening to the soft sigh of Cutch’s breath.

“You can’t really get high that way,” Elliot said once he’d exhaled, trying to distract from the way he’d practically melted into him, how he was still leaning on him. “It’s not an efficient transfer of THC; the smoke…it’s too diluted.”

“Do you have to argue with me on every damn thing?” Cutch tossed the joint to the grass, then bumped foreheads and kissed him; soft and then deeper, tongue flicking. He pulled back, looking pissed when Elliot didn’t reciprocate even though he visibly wanted to. “You’re so hard to help, sometimes, I swear….”

Elliot wanted to play it cool… cold, even; show Cutch he couldn’t be put down and then picked back up when Cutch’s latest girlfriend got sick of his shit. But… it had been so long and …who the hell was he kidding? 

He needed this like water and air – and there was only so much time left to get it.

“Kiss me again,” Elliot said, huffing out a surprised sound at the way the words made Cutch jump at him; pulling him in, tugging at his shirt with one hand and fumbling for Elliot’s belt with the other. 

And there it was; the way they kissed, the particular slide of their tongues and the perfect clench of that jaw- not too tight, not sloppy or loose. Elliot had been halfway to hard already; he hummed into Cutch’s mouth as Cutch rubbed fingers and palm over his cock through his Calvin’s.

“Wait,” Elliot said when Cutch pulled away and sank down in one move. “The mud….”

“I’m good,” Cutch stayed crouched but kept his knees off the ground. “What’s so funny?”

“Was thinking that’s not a comfortable position, but… you won’t be down there long.”

Cutch only gave a long ‘mmmmm’ at that, grinning up at Elliot with those ridiculous green eyes like Elliot was dessert before he went down on him; head bobbing, mouth hot in the cool air – hot and tight, tongue doing things Elliot only hoped he could learn to be half as good at and…

“Fuck, oh…..shit, shit, Cutch….fuuucck me….”

It didn’t take a full minute before Elliot was on his toes, frozen in that instant before the orgasm shook him apart, Cutch’s arms reaching for his hip and Elliot’s back to hold him, to keep him from falling on his ass, maybe.

“Nice staying power,” Cutch kissed and sucked at Elliot’s cock as it softened, until Elliot pushed him away. 

“Fuck…I hate coming standing up.”

“Baby,” Cutch stood; shaking out his legs like the right one had the tingles, leaning in over Elliot to kiss his mouth, his ear, his neck.

“I liked it when we were…ten,” Elliot said. “Before the hormones kicked in. A lot less complicated then.”

“That’s going back a ways,” Cutch said. "Wanted you then, too...when I used to pin you to your bedroom floor."

"I know," Elliot said. "Knew then, too." 

Elliot found the joint before they started back, giving Cutch a ‘fuck you’ look for the eyeroll that got him.

“What? It’s good pot.”

“You like it too much,” Cutch said.

“Do not. And what do you care if I do?”

He hadn’t gotten an answer back. He knew it was because the answer wasn’t a simple sentence or three, and Cutch wasn’t anything like in the mood to go there. 

-*-

There were certain advantages to being the second most popular player on your high school football team. They weren’t the full suite of amenities that came with being the quarterback, of course – but you definitely had protection from the crap a lot of other kids put up with. 

Which made Friday kind of a shock for Cutch.

“Yo, you missing your fuck-buddy?” Cutch heard Cliff Dretch ask as he flipped open his locker.

“I’d fake an interest ...” Cutch told him. “If I had any clue what the hell it is you're yammering on about or cared. But I don’t so…get bent.”

“I mean your….fffr…ieee….nnnd…d….Elll…i….otttt….” …” Cliff fake-fucked his own locker until the whole wall of them rattled a bit. “Must be a bitch, having a reliable piece of ass from way the hell back skip town on you.”

Jesus, Cutch had thought: What did it say about him, that he didn’t deck this piece of shit right here in the hall? 

“I talked with him on the phone last night,” Cutch shrugged. “Elliot was fine, and you’re full of it.”

“You’re the last person in town who did talk to him. His sister says he took off; presumably to L.A., to look for hotter, older faggots with more money...”

Maybe he’d just had enough – or maybe it was the throbbing headache it gave him, remembering their conversation and realizing Elliot had been saying goodbye the whole time – asking about Cutch’s college letters, telling him he’d be fine, his future would all be decided soon - and he’d never heard it.

Whatever. 

All Cutch saw was a flash of white light; all he felt was pain in his right fist, and when he surfaced Cliff was struggling up to his hands and knees, wiping at the blood leaking from his split-open lip.

That’s what made it real; the sight of a smartass Cutch couldn’t give less of a shit about bleeding on the floor by their lockers is what made him feel it….

Elliot was gone.


End file.
